


bloodlust

by stepofthewind



Category: Blaseball (Video Game)
Genre: Bloodlust, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Character Death, Character Study, Fanon, Gen, Team Dynamics, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-15
Updated: 2020-08-15
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:01:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25819249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stepofthewind/pseuds/stepofthewind
Summary: When Landry Violence is incinerated, Yazmin Mason sees red.(Yaz is blessed.)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 32





	bloodlust

**Author's Note:**

> guess what my newest niche is?
> 
> anyway, enjoy this personal headcanon of how our dear pitcher got the best blessing ever. the spirit of violence overtook over me at midnight after i tried to fix my sleep schedule by going to bed early, only to wake up two hours later and not be able to fall back asleep. these are the fruits of his labor. or, y'know, mine.
> 
> my twitter is [sofiabicicleta](https://twitter.com/sofiabicicleta), if you'd like to chat.
> 
> kudos and comments are sincerely appreciated!

When Landry Violence is incinerated, Yazmin Mason sees red.

She’s on the bench when it happens, seated with her fellow pitchers in rotation. It’s Nagomi’s turn on the mound, and she is pitching it to the Millennials perfectly, making sure they don’t touch the pristine bases of Sixth Circle unless she truly wants them to. That is when the hunt will commence, with Tigers hot on the heels of a batter trying to steal home. With someone like Landry as their shortstop, ground outs are more common than not. Even Ren will manage a catch here or there, toothy grin clear as he tosses the blaseball back to Nagomi.

As intense as the game is, they know how to have fun here in Hades. Yaz couldn’t be as heartless as some of them in their plays, but she knows it almost always comes down to the concept of splortsmanship. If they weren’t being like this, they wouldn’t be winning in the first place. She could excuse their actions so long as it meant a victory for their team. It  _ is _ only a game. At the end of the day, it is  _ always _ only a game.

Well, she thought it was, until her gaze shifts slightly, attention stolen by the rogue umpire starting to cause a commotion from where they stand. They never make a move until it is with intent, and the realization of why this time only occurs to her after she sees them carry it out.

A steady, perceptible finger traces the field until it lands on the back of Landry. Summoning all that they have within them, they call upon the Blaseball gods to give them the strength to act on their impulse. The heavenly hosts could not say no to such supplication, no matter the repercussions. Granting them permission with no restraint, they make their choice.

It seems like now is the best time to send the spirit of violence up to the big game in the sky.

Yaz manages to take one last look at Landry before it happens. What kills her, in hindsight, is that this is the first time he ever looks back.

Incineration is a painless process when placed in comparison with the full breadth of a game of blaseball. It is a quick thing, mentioned in passing before players pick up right where they left off, putting back together the pieces of their team with a new player. For as much as this is merely a game, it is a ruthless one. There is an efficiency to it that can be found nowhere else. At least, not without a cost. That is, after all, what the game is built on. Worth. Amount. Coinage. Numbers in a system, dictated by random chance. This is, apparently, a way to tell a story.

In real time, though, it is a yearly event to witness, a startling sight to see. With Hades as the setting for this incineration, everything about it feels calculated, not at all coincidental thanks to odds. It is so unfortunate, the power of probability. When Landry erupts into a gorgeous yet grotesque display of flame, the cacophony from spectators in the stands is equivalent to the very roar of hellfire Yaz had grown accustomed to since being brought into life in Elysium. They shout with the volume of a thousand lost souls consigned to the deepest parts of hell, uncontainable even after being brought to the conclusion that no amount of kicking and screaming would mend this newfound wound, caused by the absence of Violence.

Yaz’s reaction is a stark contrast to this. She is completely silent as she watches the shape of Landry smolder, so stunned to see the man himself immolated that she can’t react caustically. He leaves this mortal coil now, freed from the chains of a physical form, but it bores a hole in her. There was never any other way out. Still, it hurts to see a legend reduced to this sort of simmering existence. There had been an invincibility to his name that meant he deserved to die better. But this is how it went for everyone before him and everyone after him. When his denim jacket drops to the ground, left unscathed by the fire that the rogue umpire had fueled, she realizes the reality of what has come to pass.

Landry Violence is dead, and there is nothing she can do about it.

The game continues, and a familiar form emerges from Violence’s silhouette. A childhood friend, Paula Turnip, picks up Landry’s jacket and dusts his ashes off of it. She slings it over her shoulder, and for a second, Yaz gets a glimpse of a sigil peeking out from under her uniform. Oh, she already has one on, and it suits her so well. Then, a sentence rips from her throat, as if it were a first sign of life.

_ “VIOLENCE BEGETS VIOLENCE.” _

This is when the Tigers know she’s ensured for it. Especially when she attempts to steal third base do they see what she is truly capable of. The title of crowd favorite is in her future. As Paula approaches the dugout in feigned defeat, shaking off the smoke left in Landry’s wake and whatever other weights she’d been carrying prior to becoming a player, Yaz’s stomach roils. Sure, they may be old acquaintances, but that term barely holds up now. Accompanying her thoughts of Violence then are thoughts of Turnip, dated conversations about how she had conducted business in Hades echoing in her ears. Unethical, she remembers telling her, until she never saw her around Elysium again.

Paula takes the empty seat next to Yaz, and the tension that ensues still can’t be punctured by a knife, but it sure as hell can sharpen its blade.

They share a look, and that’s when they know. Years fall away like walls.

Paula presents a hand.  _ “For violence,”  _ she murmurs.

Tentatively, Yaz places her hoof in her palm.

_ “For Violence,” _ she says in return.

The third game draws to a close, and the Tigers are victorious another time. With that, they take the lead, and rightfully so. The players out on the field reunite with the players on the sidelines, though their rejoicing is muted. Mournful is more like it. An agreement is reached without words. Now, they fight with a vengeance. They fight for Violence. It’s on Yaz to see that through, pitching in possibly the penultimate game of the season. As the rotation turns to her, she stands, stilted on her hooves, and starts out to the field. Nagomi’s on her way into the dugout, skipping frame after frame until they’re face-to-face. Pulling her mitt from her hand, she slides it over Yaz’s hoof tenderly.

“You got this,” Nagomi encourages her. Neither of them try to think too hard about the half star that awaits her performance on the plate.

At the pitcher’s mound, she has to remind herself to breathe. As Millennial Dominic Marijuana takes his stance at home plate, swinging his bat around in one hand and letting his blunt ride itself out in another hand, she sucks in the dry air of Hades. It’s hot, and it chaps her lips, so she lets her tongue loll out to lick the top. A useless effort, when she’s as parched as she is, so she just plays it off as a fight for concentration. Then, the batter brings the joint to his mouth, right as she poises herself to pitch, blaseball wobbling.

Behind him, behind the catcher, the rogue umpire stares into her soul.

Dominic Marijuana, high as he is, draws a walk.

It’s abysmal, what Yaz does during this third game. It feels like New York is running circles around her, and her teammates are doing their best to help her out where they can, but it’s on her to defend the bases. Inevitably, no one else is to blame, save for the girl that stands on her own. Steals, they’re her fault, since she let them out of the gate in the first place. It’s frustrating that she sees herself fucking it up from an eagle eye’s view, yet she can’t do a thing about it. She’s stuck in this rut until it’s over.

Well, at least she knows the source of this.

Landry.

The game ends, and the score staggers under the weight of difference. The Hades Tigers regroup at their dugout, and everyone lets her off easy, the way they do every time. Fish tries to cheer her up by tearing yet another jersey into a hot crop top. She laughs a little, she’ll admit. Zion crawls out of her mech to surprise her with the stadium imp special of a hug. As she goes to reciprocate, settling her chin into the crook of her neck, she stares up at the Iron Lion. It looms with a long shadow. Idly, she wonders if she’ll ever do something of worth that’ll show in the same way.

Everyone else hums to the same tune of sympathy. It’s the standard. With their reassuring words comes an undercurrent that she thinks only she can hear. It catches her at the worst moment. Her ears lightly lift and her head turns to stare at an empty space in the stadium when it comes. It’s a little concerning to some of her teammates, though they don’t say a word. To insult the supposition of Mason is such a mortal sin.

There’s a Tiger among them that isn’t afraid to confront her.

“You can hear him, too, can’t you?”

Jessica Telephone, a ringer to teams three times now, is the one that manages to tear Yaz’s gaze away from where it’s fixed on the far distance. The deer’s eyes delay in reaching hers. She doesn’t understand what she means for a moment. That is, until she does. The noise, it’s a whole slew of things. There’s a bloodthirstiness to it that knows no bounds. Craze, cruelty, viciousness, it’s all there.

Yaz knows the word. It’s violent.

“Yeah,” she answers where she sits, back on the bench.

A five-star favorite to a half-star nothing, Jess lends her a spare Lightning in a bottle. “Drink up,” she advises as she seats herself beside her, unscrewing the top off her own and taking a sip to refuel before the final game of the season. Just like that, her eyes light up, truly like Landry’s.

“Why?” Yaz asks, scuffing a hoof at the cap of the Violent Lightning until it comes off. Despite having already opened the drink, she nurses it a tad nervously. Though it’s the team’s official choice as a source of refreshment, she has never partaken in it herself. There’s no offense meant in the move, and there’s none taken. Still, in retrospect, it feels like a disservice. After all, it  _ is _ his drink. Yaz nears her noses to the opening of it in slight curiosity. It wrinkles at the alcoholic stench immediately.

Jess chuckles at the sight, wiping some of the liquid away from the corner of her lip as she does so. Her fingerless glove lets her get it with the bare skin of her thumb. “Because…” she starts, elbowing Yaz in the way that only friends would. The pitcher  _ really _ puts her attention on the batter then.

“You don’t wanna miss us win this for him.”

_ For you. _

She’s gone as Yaz goes to respond, Dial Tone already gripped tight in her hand. With Jess’s reassuring presence amiss now, she turns to drink.

One swig, and she’s through.

It tastes like thunder.

The game is such a close one, with the scoreboard bouncing back and forth between teams throughout the innings. It feels like a kick to the gut every time the Millennials overtake them. Do these players have any pity at all? The thought’s ironic, coming from a Tiger. She means it, though. Down to her core, Yaz is aching from the punches that New York won’t pull, yet she can’t do anything to help. The least she can do is cheer her teammates on. However, her spirit to root for them comes in short bursts, influenced by when everyone is loudest. Only then does she start where she sits and shout out a half-hearted “Never look back!” Besides that, she’s  _ numb. _ Something’s wrong with this.

What’s the use of winning if Landry wasn’t here to savor it with them? A teammate that had seen the season through thick and thin with them? He was someone that she’d known since the beginning of Blaseball, whatever approximation of a year that would be. With him no longer around, their victory, while  _ for _ him, would feel hollow  _ without _ him. Yaz understands the rest of them mean well, but she can be selfish in this instance.

Anyway, they triumph. Victory should taste sweet, but it’s bitter on her tongue instead. She’s swept up in the celebration, carried aloft by a few of her friends, despite having done nothing to contribute to these last couple of games. A smile is forced onto her features. There’s a little sincerity to it, but behind it is a sadness. This shouldn’t be her in the air, lifted alongside faces like Telephone and Turnip. She’s their sweet deer pitcher.

Nothing more.

The festivities spread through to the far reaches of Hades. From every corner of this infernal hell crawls out those rejoicing to no end. Finally, a winning team worthy of its title, they say, no longer acknowledging the Pies and their wins twice over. So close to ascension, they should add. No one cares about that, though. All that matters now is that the Tigers have successfully clawed their way to the top. Jess doesn’t take it to heart, despite Philadelphia being her last home. Yaz can tell in the way she rallies cries to the team, to Hades, to Landry. As fierce as any apex predator can, Jessica growls with a true tiger’s strength, having earned her stripes in play.

Everything is overwhelming. Yaz won’t voice that aloud, but she needs a break. Quickly, she excuses herself at a point in the partying.

No one chases after her as she sprints to Sixth Circle. At least, she can’t feel anybody on her back, devoid of everything except the need to be where she had stood only hours before. That’s how important she is, she thinks harshly to herself. Maybe they respected her space and her privacy, but it was better to berate herself with the reality that not a single one among them cared about her. Why would they? Worth more than her half star, her ass. That is all that she would amount to. When she was incinerated, like Landry himself, her legacy wouldn’t look a thing like his. Wreathed flame, funeral pyre. No, they’d pity that fragment of a star, and then, they’d carry on, welcoming her replacement with open arms.

River Styx take her soul, she  _ wishes _ she was in Elysium still. Running on her hind legs, Yaz feels like a fraud. She wants to unlearn this, return to galloping through fields on all fours, and never express human emotion ever again. The herd she formerly called her family were fortunate to stay mindless, destined to live lives without reason. None of them were born and bred for blaseball. Her radioactive bite suddenly sears through her fur. It’s the worst reminder that she wasn’t either.

She’s back in the stadium before she knows it. The floodlights are still on, but besides that, it’s been vacated. The seats, the dugouts, the sandlot, they’re all empty.

Save the pitcher’s mound.

Yaz hastens her step towards it and stands tall, posture stiffening ramrod straight as she looks to the sky, full of a storm.

“Why?” she whispers as a wind slowly starts and settles in.

Nothing.

“Why?” she continues, voice increasing in volume.

Still nothing.

“Why?” she cries with a fitting finality.

She knows the roiling red clouds above her doe-eyed head are about to answer her. They do.

As if on cue, a crack of lightning tears the sky into heavy halves. It splits at a certain point, twin spindly streaks now racing to reach the heart of Sixth Circle Stadium. Yaz doesn’t realize they’re headed straight towards her until too late. Without warning, she is seized by these bolts, scarlet in color and coursing through her whole body, and held down on the mound by them. They electrify her skull with terrifying consistency, forcing her eyes to roll back with their energy and only show the whites of them. Her jaw unhinges just in time and she releases a soulscream,  _ her _ soulscream, signature so loud that all of Hades hears it. She’s not dying.  _ There was never any other way out. _ That doesn’t stop her from responding to the unbearable pain of electrocution. Receptive to the excruciating torture, this comes close enough to incineration that the concepts touch.

Is this what it was like for Landry?

Eventually, the deadly display of sparks calms itself down, in whatever convoluted manner it can. They shrink and narrow until they form a familiar image. A depiction of a stag’s set of antlers crowns her brow, wrought through her blaseball cap. They beautifully crest upwards as the shafts of lightning retreat back into the skies. The second they release their hold on her, she collapses to the ground, her head too weighty.

“Yaz!” she hears someone shout from a far distance, though it’s fuzzy in her ear. Lidded eyes lift to see Jessica Telephone. However, she transforms into a different face for just a second, the ringer changing to a friendly feline, a former Tiger rippling with the shade of a Pie. Nolanestophia Patterson stares out at her equal parts concerned and pleased. She’s proud of the dear girl that’s in front of her now. With a steady blink of an eye, Jess is back.

Behind her flock the rest of her team. Zion is out of her mech, Iron Lion left at the entrance despite following the regulations of fitting through there, flapping her imp wings as if they’ll propel her forward. Hiroto, the all star ace, comes right after her, forgoing her hole to tend to her friend instead. Randy sprints ahead, not letting the living armor on him restrain his running. Nagomi clips along at an astonishing rate, to the point that Yaz blearily has to look away from her hitbox. The rest of them follow without fear.

With the receding storm comes a clap of thunder and the sound of a god.

_ Yazmin Mason's pitching stats were maxed out. _

A first blessing out of a million more. She will watch as Alyssa Harrell fades from the foreground, Mclaughlin Scorpler now standing where she once was. Their victory is well met with a new member and a new best pitcher. This farewell to the one that never existed isn’t permanent. In a game that goes on forever, there’s no end. For now, she stands, not shaky whatsoever and keeping steadier than ever instead.

Paula speaks up.

“Yazmin? Are you alright?”

Her attention catches on to Turnip’s question like flame to paper. Her eyes glower like hot coals and a little fire flickers out from underneath her lashes as she stares at her and the rest of her team. They approach with more caution, and she notes that, against her nature. Something mercurial has seeped into Yaz’s bloodstream, leaving her brooding without meaning to. A hum of approval is in the air. The spirit of violence, her longtime companion, has gone quiet in eager anticipation to see how she will handle her new state of being.

“Yeah, I’m alright.”


End file.
